


Generations

by Ankaret



Category: Dragonriders of Pern - McCaffrey
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-23
Updated: 2009-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-05 01:45:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ankaret/pseuds/Ankaret
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five little vignettes following a family through Pern's history.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Generations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Merfilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/gifts).



It was an honour to be allowed into the presence of AIVAS, and Journeywoman Harper Kimara was determined to be worthy of it. As she sat on the smooth bench in the strangely rounded corridor that led to the AIVAS's chamber, she shuffled her papers nervously, making certain that the right one was on the top.

"Keeley O'Hara, born three years and eight months before Planetfall," Kimara traced the words reverently on the smooth printed paper. At any other time, Master Tagetarl's printing press would have been a wonder in itself; now, with the discovery of the AIVAS, wonder was piled on wonder until Kimara was starting to wonder whether any of them had any capacity for wonder left.

"Oh, you finally got a chance to talk to AIVAS about those genealogies of yours?" said a friendly voice. "I'm glad. Master Wansor was in there so long this morning, I didn't think anyone else would have a turn."

Kimara smiled. Of all the people involved in AIVAS's long-term plans, Jancis was one of the friendliest and least intimidating. She made room on the bench for the young smith. "Wansor's doing important work. More important than one Harper with a genealogy project," she said shyly.

"It's still interesting." Jancis leaned over and looked at the paper. "So, was this Keeley weyrmates with a rider called O'hara, then?"

"No, both words are part of the same name. Like… like Weyrwoman Lessa being known as Lessa of Benden, that sort of thing."

Jancis frowned. Kimara tried again to explain. "They just all had two names back then. I suppose it was because wherever they came from, there were too many people to tell apart if people just had one name."

Jancis nodded wisely. "That's what AIVAS calls a consequence of an industrialised society," she intoned, mimicking the AIVAS's measured delivery.

Kimara nodded eagerly. "I'm sure I'm right. Look here, where it says Torene Ostrovsky. That's how they refer to Torene in the oldest records. And I've found more Ostrovskys, so I think they must have been related to her. I'd always thought Ostrovsky was a nickname of hers, when I saw it before. Something about flying up into the sky, maybe, but it didn't make any sense to us any more because of - well, you know how the language has shifted. Or maybe you don't, but all of us Harpers have had to learn _all_ about it."

"I've been learning how to solder circuit boards and write programs instead," said Jancis easily, hugging one knee. "Not that I've taken to it the way Piemur has. He's like Pierjan with a new toy."

"We all are." Kimara stroked the surface of the paper again as if it were a pet. "My father was an Oldtimer, you know. A bronze rider. When I think how easily I could have been born five hundred Turns ago, and never seen any of this at all..."

"You'd just have bothered some ancestor of mine into building you a printing press right then and there to make sure everyone on Pern had a copy of the Question Song," said Jancis. "Harpers!"

"Smiths!" said Kimara, smiling.

The door opened to the AIVAS room. Soft light poured into the corridor. Kimara jumped to her feet, hugging her sheaf of papers to her chest, and hurried eagerly through the door.

* * *

K'mar snagged himself a meatroll and a mug of klah, and strode long-leggedly over to join the throng of dragonriders at the long tables in Fort Weyr's Lower Caverns. He sat down beside the Weyr healer, who bolted down a mouthful of sweet roll and propped his head on his elbow to look up at K'mar with an expression of offended weariness.

"Before you join everyone else in the Weyr in asking me, bronze rider, no, I have no idea whether the young woman will recover. She's young and strong, but she's put herself and that dragon of hers under an enormous amount of strain, and there's a limit to both human and dragon endurance."

"But not a limit to dragon _size_, eh?" said T'shan, one of the younger green riders. "I'm not sure I believe in Ramoth, even now I've seen her with my own eyes. My Dirith could hide under one of her wings."

"So there's no news?" said K'mar patiently. He raised a hand before the healer could speak again. "I'm _not_ just gossiping! Cabrath and I are off to back to Telgar as soon as I've eaten, and you know R'mart will want to know what's going on."

"If he doesn't, Bedella will," said T'shan with a grin. "Won't her nose be out of joint? She's always going on about how Solth's the biggest queen on Pern - though myself, I think Loranth's a hair the longer."

K'mar finished his klah with a long gulp. "Well, one good thing's come of all of this," he said, wiping his mouth. "At least whilst people are gossiping about this Lessa and her arrival out of nowhere, they're not constantly moaning about what we're going to do once Thread stops falling."

"I know what I'm going to do," said T'shan with a wink. "Spend a lot more time visiting my friend A'varry at Ista, that's what."

"Oh, you and A'varry!" K'mar gave the green rider a friendly punch in the shoulder as he strode out.

_I am ready_, said Cabrath as K'mar made a final check of the straps and swung himself up into the saddle.

"I know you are, dear heart!"

The dragons bugled as Cabrath leapt into the air. Fort Weyr spiralled away below them as the bronze's strong wingbeat bore them upwards.

Just before they went _between_, K'mar caught sight of the long golden shape of Ramoth, far below. He felt a chill in his heart, piercing it even beyond the blackness and bitter chill of _between_.

Telgar popped into vision below them; and as Cabrath keened a greeting and the dragons of Telgar responded, K'mar was still wondering what Lessa's arrival might mean, for himself and for Pern. Some people said she had a look of the Lord Holder of Ruatha. K'mar's own people came from a tiny cothold on the Keroon prairie, but he'd heard all the tales of the famous bloodline of Ruatha and their deeds.

One thing was certain; Weyrwoman Bedella would _not_ be pleased to hear of another queen's rider making such a dramatic entrance, particularly since Ramoth was so much larger than Solth. Better proportioned, too, and a better colour.

Idly making plans to avoid the Weyrwoman, K'mar stripped off his riding gloves and helmet and strode into the Weyr.

* * *

Kelse counted heads once again as the children bundled themselves out of the cothold and onto the back of the cart. Margan, Eshon, Kellian, Kley, the twins, her sister's two, the littles... She grabbed her youngest son as he went by and buttoned him forcibly into his woollen cloak. "Sit _still_, or none of us will go to the Gather!"

She boosted her son up onto the cart and into the arms of her sister's eldest daughter, and counted heads again. There was still one missing. A different one, this time. Gathering up her skirts in her plump hands and muttering to herself, Kelse bustled round to the front of the cart, and found her eldest son Kley leaning confidentially against the runner-beasts in their harness and feeding them palmfuls of sweetener.

"Get along with you! Up on the back of the cart with your brothers and sisters!" Kelse punctuated her remarks with a series of swats on the backside. "There'll be time enough for lolling about tending to lazy beasts when you go to the Crafthall next year!"

Kley grinned unrepentantly down at her. Down, where only last year he'd been grinning _up_. "If I wanted to loll about, I'd stay and be a cotholder, not go and train as an animal healer."

"Loll about? You think I have time to loll about, with all of you to feed and teach and sew for as well as the work around the hold?" Kelse braced her fists on her ample hips and glared up at her tall son. "Come along, then, or we won't get to Keroon before nightfall, and you won't get to see that feline you're so eager to gawp at! Aren't there enough felines around the hold? If this one's better than the usual kind at killing tunnel snakes, _then_ it might be worth going to Keroon to see it."

Kley laughed and hugged his mother. "I think it's too big to fit down the tunnels, Ma. They say it's the size of a herdbeast calf. Maybe bigger."

"What use is a feline too big to fit down tunnels?" Kelse peered over at the back of the cart and counted heads again. Eshon, Kellian, the twins, her sister's girls, Finnis, Delf... where was Margan?

"Margan!" she shouted, as she saw her eldest daughter come hurrying out of the cothold with her cloak flaring out behind her, a long swathe of cloth piled over her arm. "What are you doing? Shards and shells, I nearly left you behind!"

Margan boosted herself up onto the back of the cart, her curly dark hair coming loose around her brown face. "Sorry, Ma! I wanted my best dress for the Gather, and I just remembered where I put it. In the harper's old room, where it could air out!"

"Margan wants the dragonriders to see her," said Kelse's sister's younger daughter in an irritating singsong. "Margan thinks maybe they'll ask her for a dance. They say the Igen Weyrleaders will be there, and maybe the Fort Weyrleader too."

"Margan fancies Sh'gall!" chirped Delf, earning himself a glare and a pretended swat from his big sister.

"It'd serve you all right if none of us went to the Gather at all," Kelse grumbled as she hoisted herself up onto the driver's seat and settled her skirts around her sturdy legs. "I wouldn't be taking you if I didn't have vegetables to sell."

"I don't see why I shouldn't dance with a dragonrider if I want to," Margan muttered from the back, her voice barely audible over the animals' hooves. "You're the one who always used to tell us our I-don't-know-how-many-greats-grandsire was a brown rider. At Igen, you said. You always said it was an honour to be dragonblooded."

"That much honour and an eighth-mark will buy you a cup of stew," said her mother tartly. "Now sit still, all of you, or none of us will be at Keroon Hold before nightfall."

* * *

Keelan O'Hara-Okafor hummed to himself as he slathered oil along his dragon's broad flank. Fanth was nearly fully grown now, and Keelan had to scramble around him to get his hide oiled. Any day now, Keelan and the other weyrlings would be flying against Thread. Keelan couldn't wait. They'd flown so many drills that he was sure he and Fanth could fly Thread in their sleep.

_More in the crease under the wing_. Fanth's voice was plaintive. _I itch_.

"Sorry, beloved," Keelan poured more oil onto the leather cloth and rubbed away with a will.

Fanth lifted his wing obligingly and peered at Keelan from under the tip of the vane, his eyes slowly swirling from gold to green to violet and back again. Keelan grinned back, thinking, as he always did, that Fanth might not be the largest brown, but he definitely had the handsomest face and the most expressive eyes.

_I may not be big, but I am fast_, said Fanth complacently. _Why would I wish to be big when everyone is cramped? Alaranth barely has room to turn around without treading on her own tail._

Keelan laughed, surprised. "That's a good way of looking at it. I always said you were smarter than the bigger browns and bronzes."

_Of course I am. I Impressed you_, said Fanth, his voice in Keelan's head warmer and deeper than usual. _But I would like a little more space. And more oil. My hide itches._

"When they open up the new Weyr at Igen, we'll have all the space we want," said Keelan, scrubbing industriously. "And in six years time, when there's no more Thread to fly, we'll have all the time we want, too."

_I always have all the time I want_, said Fanth.

Keelan leaned his head against his dragon's neck, feeling the slow pulse of Fanth's heartbeat echo in the bones of his skull. "Yes, you do, don't you? But we won't tell M'hall or Torene or anyone else about that. It's just our secret."

_It will not be our secret if you take risks_, said Fanth sedately. _M'hall was saying yesterday that he didn't know where you'd got the time to get that tan_.

"If only he knew!" The weyrling grinned at his dragon as he wrung out the oily cloth. "You always know _when_ you're going, don't you, Fanth?"

Fanth settled back on his haunches and fanned his wings in the cramped space available. His eyes whirled contentedly.

_I always know when I am because I am always in the right place and time. The right place and time for me is with you_.

* * *

Keeley O'Hara was the first one off the shuttle. She bounced in the seat by the big sealed blast-door whilst Ju Adjai's calming voice over the comm went through the procedure for disembarking; she bounced against her mother's legs in the cramped aisle as the door scissored slowly open, and she bounced all the way down the spindly steps the moment they were unfolded.

And then she stood quite still. Her mouth formed a silent O. It was all so _big_! Bigger even than the cavernous corridors of the small part of the _Bahrain_ she'd been allowed to play in. And the air smelt different, fresh and warm and scented with something she couldn't identify, like putting your nose right up to a cart full of fruit and vegetables and taking a big sniff.

"Out of the way now, Keels," said her mother, picking Keeley up and swinging her onto her shoulders. "Let other people have a sniff of Pern too. I'm sorry, Madame Ping Yung, she didn't mean to get under your feet. She was just taking it all in."

"So are we all," said the geneticist sedately. She pressed a hand against the side of the shuttle as if balancing herself between two worlds, and looked from horizon to horizon.

Keeley looked too. The sky was a funny colour, like someone had coloured it with the wrong crayon, and there were mountains: complicated jaggedy mountains far away, and nearer mountains that were a friendly cone-shape like someone Keeley's age had drawn them. There were birds in the sky.

And something that wasn't a bird, perching on one of the tail-vanes of the shuttle. It had frilled golden wings and a long elegant tail that curved against the shuttle's ceramic side. It was the prettiest thing Keeley had ever seen, prettier than her mother's sculpture that had come all the way from Terra and then all the way to Pern in a box.

Keeley shifted her weight on her mother's shoulders to point at the creature. It looked straight at her, opened its mouth to yawn at her with a jaw full of tiny pointed teeth, and _disappeared_ with a flip of its tail.

"Yes, it's just the shuttle, Keels," said her mother. "You remember, we were on it just now."

She shook her head and smiled at Kitti Ping Yung, inviting her to share in the age-old fellowship of mothers with incomprehensible daughters. "Honestly, at this age, they're more alien than the Eridani. A whole new planet to look at and she's staring at the shuttle! Come along, Keels, I'll show you the flag the Admiral and the Governor planted. You ought to see it."

Keeley wasn't that interested in some old flag. But she looked around eagerly anyway as they moved through the bustling crowd. She was wondering how the little golden creature had disappeared like that, and whether it would come back.

She hoped it would.


End file.
